I have reached my target weight and fat%. I still try to add weight to my lifts and eat a (small) surplus. After maybe 3 months I cut some carbs and fat out of my diet until I am slightly under my target weight. Repeat.

Once you get past ~12 reps, you're only building endurance, not muscle size or strength. But you still need the strength to get up to 12 reps, so I couldn't imagine the muscles getting smaller. I've only been working out for two months, though. All of this info is just from stuff I've read on reddit.

Why do you think masons that lay bricks all day have massive forearm strength? Or tennis players have huge forearms? Or how cyclists have massive legs? Their "repetitions" are in the hundreds and thousands each day.

When you apply some common sense, it becomes pretty apparent that it's not a this-or-that scenario.

Calf muscles (and other muscles that are mainly used as stabilizers, such as the muscles in your forearms, your abs, etc) are mainly composed of type I muscle fibers, which do not possess the same potential for growth as type II fibers. That's why they're tougher to build.

I see that mentioned all the time. I'm not sure how this idea started, but it doesn't even make sense from a logical perspective. Calves are designed to support heavy weight for long periods of time. Running, jumping, climbing, etc. It makes NO sense to try to train calves with lighter high rep training, that's what they already do.

Forearms are about the same. The only thing that has EVER helped my forearms is lots of heavy deads in the 1-3 rep range, or short(~5 second) heavy static holds. I don't train calves as I don't really care to(powerlifter), but I can only assume training calves with very heavy loads for low reps would have the same effects on them as well.

Definitely, good core exercise too. This is probably OK for a powerlifter, but I bet most people can't(or shouldn't) walk out with enough on their back to hit a 1-8 rep max for calves. Seated raises would probably be better in these cases.

"Pfffft, idiot seems to be under a false impression. Better downvote them without even considering that I could simply be a decent human being and explain why I think they're wrong, or just leave it be and let someone else (who isn't afraid of being wrong themselves) explain it."

Be honest with yourself: if you're on a diet, you spend a fair amount of time thinking about it. Being perfectly content saves up an astounding amount of mental energy. Gone are the worries, doubts and obsessions about diet, weight and all other issues pertaining to reaching your goal. The itch is gone. No need to scratch it anymore.

But that void needs to be filled with something. You will suddenly rediscover new interests and hobbies - I did. Don't fill the void with more training. Fill it with reading, family, friends or whatever you like. Learn to be content once your ultimate goal is reached. Set new goals*, but learn to accept slower, gradual progress.

Guys have a tendency to fill the void with more training in order to pack on more muscle once they consider themselves done dieting. If they're not dieting, they're training themselves into the ground. Yes, I used to be that guy a long time ago.

So you dug up personal information that I know I made publicly available right here on reddit. Am I supposed to be scared of your uber leet power? Go do some good in the world with your persistence and skill.

I've never hit any of my goals, because by the time one is in sight, I want to adjust it to be more aggressive. Think about it this way: say when you start, you've got a goal to squat 225lbs, 3x5. Well, by the time you're doing 215, you're going to be thinking: hey, maybe I can get to 315. It's a long way off, but if I keep training... Then 225 passes by and you don't even really notice because you're focused on the new goal.

The benefit to this is you're never the dog that caught the mail truck. And in the process of reaching ever-forward for the next brass ring, you're discovering reservoirs of potential you never knew you had. 315 might have seemed discouragingly impossible if you'd started out with that in mind back when you were just trying to get form right on the empty bar.

Obviously, at some point, you do start to push your genetic potential on any individual exercise. But that's when you open up new avenues of achievement. There's a theoretical maximum to how much you can pull up, for instance, but when you're getting close to that, maybe you become interested in a muscle-up. When you've got muscle mass and tone down, maybe you want to work on your flexibility, so you start yoga whilst maintaining whatever you've done before. Who knows? That's the fun. It never ends because you'll never be able to do everything.

Maintenance is a myth. It's not much more than a pleasant word for stagnation. If you don't keep moving the finish line on yourself, setting new and more ambitious goals, you'll either become bored, restless, or lazy.

ALWAYS strive to be better tomorrow than you were today. This goes for fitness as well as life.

I know a few people that are just interest in maintenance. A guy that goes to my gym that's pretty jacked is always in there doing super low numbers and when I asked him about it he said he was happy with his size and lowered his numbers because it'll be better for his joints long term.

You don't even have to "get strong enough". As soon as I hit my goal of a bodyweight bench(which was 100 lbs heavier than my starting bench) I started working on calisthenics exercises straight away just because I wanted to. I still have a goal of the 2 plate bench, but it's not my priority anymore, because I'm more concerned with achieving the planche push up.

I know a lot, in fact most, of modern western society's ideas about health and wellness are off-target, but that does not necessarily mean that most (which by definition is 50% or more of the population) suffer muscle dysmorphia as a result of those attitudes.

As Ateisti just already said, it isn't about only muscle mass. Someone could try really hard to get "defined" muscles and never really see themselves getting there. "Defined" is a really open ended word in terms of muscle building, I know someone who says that being able to pull an inch of fat off your stomach means that you are fat. The defined muscles that someone is looking for is usually the ones found in magazines under favourable lighthing, dehydrated models, and a ton of other effect. Someone who uses magazine models as a benchmark for "defined" muscles, is setting themselves up for disaster.

True, but a lot of peoples ideas of 'built' isn't attainable naturally, let alone what most people consider bulky. Given the majority of the community is natural, most people will go their whole lifting career trying to get bigger.

This isn't a bad thing, training for a goal is huge motivation. Personally, if I got to a point where I was as big or strong as I wanted and just lifted to maintain, I wouldn't last a month.

I agree. Eating disorders are a problem because they are unhealthy. Any obsession is only negative when its effects become negative and disrupt people's lives. If training remains healthy, then a little healthy obsession is a good thing. It's not even close to the same thing as an eating disorder.

Healthy obsessions can still be bad. Orthorexia, or obsession with eating all healthy foods is just as bad as anorexia. The fact that something controls your life is where the problem lies, even if it has benefits of making you healthier.

I made that comment because I am at that point. I can look at my self in the mirror and seriously say that I look damn good with a 6 pack at 196 lbs standing 5'7''. But Am i satisfied? Yes. Am I happy? Yes. Am I at my peak? No. And I hope I never get there. Once you reach your best form, where do you go? What do you do? Why keep training? I never want that happen cause I always want something to strive for. If your not constantly trying to improve your self then what are you doing?

People don't have eating disorders to improve their body per say. It's more about control. They can't control something in their life and they look to food as a means for that.

Like for example. You break up with a GF. She stops eating. It's not because she has this desire to look different, but rather she can't control that you broke up with her, so she controls what she puts in her body.

This is just one example of a million different situations. Eating disorders are a way of coping.

Eating Disorders are more about control rather than aesthetics. And that comment was meant towards working hard and discipline to achieve a new goal. Would you ever stop lifting heavy cause you hit a new PR? Are you ever going to be like, nah I don't want to get stronger...I'm good?

"Patrick Bateman: Harold, it's Bateman, Patrick Bateman. You're my lawyer so I think you should know: I've killed a lot of people. Some girls in the apartment uptown, uh, some homeless people maybe 5 or 10, um, an NYU girl I met in Central Park. I left her in a parking lot behind some donut shop. I killed Bethany, my old girlfriend, with a nail gun, and some man, uh, some old faggot with a dog last week. I killed another girl with a chainsaw, I had to, she almost got away, and, uh, someone else there I can't remember, maybe a model, but she's dead too. And Paul Allen. I killed Paul Allen with an axe in the face, his body is dissolving in a bathtub in Hell's Kitchen. I don't want to leave anything out here. I guess I've killed maybe 20 people, maybe 40. I have tapes of a lot of it, uh, some of the girls have seen the tapes. I even, um... I ate some of their brains, and I tried to cook a little. Tonight I, uh, I just had to kill a LOT of people. And I'm not sure I'm gonna get away with it this time. I guess I'll uh, I mean, ah, I guess I'm a pretty uh, I mean I guess I'm a pretty sick guy. So, if you get back tomorrow, I may show up at Harry's Bar, so you know, keep your eyes open."

the book was released in 1991 with that quote appearing towards the beginning (when Brice was still in the picture). maybe he had a newspaper with that very ad on it c. 1989 in front of him when he thought of using that line

The question has been answered already but I find it interesting that so many people are saying "don't stop, just keep going" when there are so many people who don't work out because they think they'll get super huge by accident. This question seems like the one they should be asking if that is genuinely the thing keeping them out of the gym.

Common sense would say this: To grow your muscles, you lift progressively heaver stuff. Therefore, to keep your muscles where they are, stop lifting heavier stuff and just lift stuff that is as heavy as the last thing you lifted.

Muscular growth is not directly proportional to how heavy the weights you lift are-- they are related but it's not as simple as what you're saying. Take a look at Olympic lifters. If what you're saying is true, those guys would be the size of a small dump truck.

Size and maintenance for the most part is a function of caloric intake. To gain muscle, do workouts that promote hypertrophy and consume more calories than you burn. To maintain muscular gains, make sure your consumption roughly equals what you are burning (all while continuing to lift). You can actually continue to make significant strength gains with the proper workout even if you aren't actually gaining raw muscle mass.

So I basically hit my peak a few months ago and I haven't been making many strength or size gains. So now I just go m/w/f on a minimized routine and haven't seen any loss of size/muscle and its been about 4 months. When I was trying to gain hard I was going 6 days a week.

In my experience, despite the never ending "its the food not the gym comments", it is also the gym.

What I mean is, I started out cynical that most people knew what they were doing because the internet had made it clear for skinny guys like me, food was the answer and the gym was not.

Food was the answer for a lot of it but years later, I'm not a huge guy but fit and I just eat. I eat without thinking about it. I don't measure every single calorie or macro. I can eyeball my general diet and think about what I'm lacking from experience. I don't need to meticulously pack my own lunches or worry my split is wrong. I'm currently not trying to bulk. Guess what, I still have lifts shooting up beyond what they've been. Sure, if I needed to get down to model shoot cut I'd have to spend a couple weeks actually paying attention to carbs/protein/water/sodium. But I'm not. So day to day, I'm just regular guy cut and getting stronger and consciously thinking less about food while working out than ever before. So it's not about having a dysmorphic body image. It's about realizing that finally understanding what healthy is on an internal level means you can go back to not thinking too hard about what you eat with some gym time thrown in because you will be able to eat healthy without it becoming a "thing". This is a lifeline goal of just generally being healthier, not a quick to burn out "rush" of obsessive goal meeting that eventually will fall out from underneath you.

What you learn by changing your body now, you will keep with you forever. I don't see myself hitting the gym 3 days a week for life, but I will sometimes run in the mornings, go swimming, help my friends move stuff, have long lasting intense sex with various people, do hands on work in the house, fix my neighbors stuff, have lots of sweaty workout sex, bike outside as much as I could instead of driving, book online orgies to have lots of sex, and other everyday physical activities.

personally I always am trying to gain, but if I have a certain body part getting stronger faster I'll just cut down on my reps and sets for a specific exercise. or if I just want to lean out lower weight and increase reps

Well, it's pretty simple. You keep working out. There are several things you can do:

Continue training for strength/hypertrophy as you were. I mean, you're not going to get huge if you don't lift/eat huge. You're just going to maintain what you already have. Eat at a slight surplus on lift days, and at a deficit on rest days. Do this for four months. Cut for two. Do this continually to maintain mass/definition.

Change your routine from a 3/4 day split to a 5/6 day split and just work on individual muscle groups (learn to focus on each muscle).

Start making weight goals. Rather than chasing a body, chase a number. My goals are bench 2 plates, squat 3, and DL 5.

There will come a time when age starts eroding your strength and muscle size and fat starts accumulating where it didn't before. From the question, I would say it's a good bet you are not yet 40.

Do enough work to maintain your strength, speed and mobility. Do at least 1 session each week, devoted to each of these fitness attributes (say 20-30 minutes each) and if you start sliding, step it up on that part. Everybody has their weak point that they need to work at and it will be different for everyone. If you have a sport you like to do, your performance in that sport should be a benchmark.

This question seems strange. The purpose of bodybuilding or fitness is to continue to achieve success. The greatest bodybuilders of all time (think to the best Mr. Olympia's) never stopped improving, even when they were at the top. The drive to continually improve is part of the definition of bodybuilding. Being "satisfied" seems like a copout in my opinion.

Think back to Arnold back in the 70's when he won all those Mr. O titles, he didn't merely maintain his physique since he was the best in the world. He continually pushed his limits and improved his physique every year.

I think the real question should be - why do you think you can't continue to improve?

I cannot begin to understand how anyone could be 100% satisfied and not seek out even the most minor improvements

Bang for buck. I lift about 3 times per week and run maybe twice a week. I could do a lot more (in my mid-20s I was working out for about 18 hours per week), but I have other responsibilities and I'd just rather not. On weeks when I have more free time to go to the gym, I go and play basketball instead of working out more.